I recently started sprinkling bee pollen over my breakfasts. Luckily, the local bee pollen around here is slightly sweet, and I think it’s because the fruits here are sweeter. I’ve tried bee pollen from Virginia and it just tastes bad. Must be those dogwoods! Anyway, in a previous post I subtly mentioned that I decided to go off the birth control pill. It had been on my mind for awhile, but when reading “Must Have Been Something I Ate” I made my final decision. I’m a simple, no-nonsense kind of person, and the birth control pill started to seem more like nonsense. I also want to see where my body is at and functioning without synthetic hormones being produced.

So I did some reading on how to rebalance hormones, and some advice for stopping the pill. I found out that:

Shen Nung, a Chinese emperor from around 2,735 B.C., assembled an encyclopedia that included some of the benefits of bee products, including information claiming that bee pollen can slow down the aging process (Source).

Bee pollen has been talked about in Egyptian texts and the Bible. Pythagoras, Hippocrates and Pliny the Elder, all credited as the fathers of western medicine, prescribed bee pollen along with other traditional health practitioners due to the property of healing contained within the pollen (Source).

Studies have shown that bee pollen helps restore the health of female reproductive system and relief from the discomfort of PMS. Sounds like something that could help me during this transition! I’ll be sharing some tidbits I come across along the way, and things I’ve been incorporating in my life (and diet) that are related to this topic.

These muffins were so tasty with a spread of whipped sweet cream butter. The recipe for these muffins? Well, here you go!

Maple Oat and Cornmeal Muffins

makes 12 muffins

Ingredients

2 Ener-G egg replacer “eggs”

1 cup milk

1/4 cup coconut oil

1 1/2 cups cornmeal

1 tablespoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup oat flour

1/4 cup maple syrup

1. Heat oven to 450 F. Grease muffin cups.

2. In large bowl, combine all the ingredients; mix well. Pour batter into greased muffin tin.

3. Bake at 450 F for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown.

I had been wanting to make Kelsey’s Banana Chocolate Chunk muffins for quite some time now and I finally got around to making them. Instead of using milk I spiked them with eggnog. I thought of Natalie and her post about how she isn’t afraid to let herself get creative and really takes her personal likes into account. Hence I added more cinnamon, and ground up a bar of 70% dark chocolate!

Sprouting these sunflower seeds was a success! It was like a science experiment, and when I saw that they were indeed sprouting I felt accomplished.

I made another one of Peggy K’s recipes from her book “Must Have Been Something I Ate.” This was one of those salads that you could bring to a get together and it would hold its own. Definitely not a “side salad” because this became the center of my meal it was so good!

It had sunflower seed sprouts, mixed greens, alfalfa sprouts, avocado, cucumber, red bell pepper, arame, pumpkin seeds, walnuts, hemp seeds, and kelp granules. It’s a lot of stuff for a salad but it’s not hard to throw together. The salad also has to two choices for dressings and I chose the one with olive oil, balsamic, lemon juice, dried oregano, sea salt and black pepper, and dijon mustard. You can also add hummus to make it a creamier dressing. I did that the next day with the leftovers and it was so good!

If you guys have any advice on coming off the pill, or have some insight I would greatly appreciate it!

And in other news, the “Must Have Been Something I Ate” Giveaway is still going on so don’t forget to enter if you haven’t yet! This book is definitely worth a read, and Peggy K’s knowledge can be passed on to someone else.

p.s. I’ll be flying to Toronto next week, and New York from there for another week! I’ll finally be able meet up with one of my favorite bloggers, Gillian.